9 - Subjectivity in social analysis

Summary

According to ethnographies written in the classic mode, the detached observer epitomizes neutrality and impartiality. This detachment is said to produce objectivity because social reality comes into focus only if one stands at a certain distance. When one stands too close, the ethnographic lens supposedly blurs its human subjects. In this view, the researcher must remove observer bias by becoming the emotional, cognitive, and moral equivalent of a blank slate. Translated into ethical terms … the myth of detachment gives ethnographers an appearance of innocence, which distances them from complicity with imperialist domination. Prejudice and distortion, however, putatively derive from the vices of subjectivity: passionate concern, prior knowledge, and ethical engagement.

If distance has certain arguable advantages, so too does closeness, and both have their deficits. Yet classic social science has endowed the former with excessive virtue, and the latter with excessive vice. Distance normalizing accounts … all too often lead ethnographic writings to translate the compelling events of daily life into the routine performance of conventional acts. The present chapter contests the equation of analytical distance and scientific objectivity by arguing that social analysts should explore their subjects from a number of positions, rather than being locked into any particular one.